27
Feb
2012
Mankiw vs. Rothbard
This was a Mises Daily I had last week that I forgot to post. An excerpt:
In a recent New York Times piece, bestselling textbook author, Harvard professor, and Mitt Romney advisor Greg Mankiw offered four principles of tax reform that are almost universally endorsed by professional economists, even extremely free-market ones.
In the present article, I’ll critique Mankiw’s views from a Rothbardian perspective. The ostensible consensus viewpoint among economists on fixing the tax code shows the perils of groupthink.
“…Doctors who study lung cancer agree that people shouldn’t smoke…”
It is not necessarily true, that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NEf3B4AVM9YC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=naturally+grown+tobacco+AND+cancer&source=web&ots=3xpQO-NvhC&sig=wEd4wngyblbNsDlus0vcRmFXGlQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#v=onepage&q=naturally%20grown%20tobacco%20AND%20cancer&f=false
It may be true that smoking modern-farmed and -cured tobacco causes lung cancer. But, such may not be the case for traditionally-grown and -cured tobacco.
Yet again, it is appropriate to question conventional medical advice.